The Qatsi Trilogy (3-DVD)

Beginning in the early 1980s, avant-garde director Godfrey Reggio launched an unusual, critically-acclaimed documentary series known as the QATSI trilogy. The first installment, KOYAANISQATSI (1983), has a title that means "life in turmoil" in Hopi; accordingly, the movie contrasts images of the harmony present in nature with the violent disruption that takes place when civilization rears its head. Its follow-up, the 1988 POWAQAATSI, uses a similar framework and approach that shows how Third World cultures continue to be exploited by more modernized societies. The third and final installment, 2002's NAQOYQATSI, examines the complex impact of technology on civilizaton, with dozens of preexisting images that Reggio digitally and optically alters, essentially implying that technology has become part and parcel of early 21st century culture in lieu of disrupting it. All three films appear in this box set from the Criterion Collection.